Favoritos de ocean_beach_goth

A jay's nest that, before this rain, was tucked into a bougainvillea off our deck. After the branch broke and fell, the nest is somewhat worse for wear -- but still beautiful. Intricate open-weave basket of twigs for the exterior, tightly woven grasses for the cozy inside chamber. The jay raised three chicks last spring-summer, right above the carport. Hope she tries this same spot again this spring.

We saw hundreds if not thousands of these in a road rut serving as a high intertidal mud puddle. Light's Manual says, "Populations in the San Francisco Bay are endangered; they now live in high intertidal marshes, having been displaced by Ilyanassa obsoleta." Similarly Cohen and Carlton (1995) write, "The introduced Atlantic snail Ilyanassa obsoleta now occupies the Bay mudflat areas formerly occupied by the native snail Cerithidea californica. Each spring the two populations of these snails collide, and by mid-summer the exotic Ilyanassa restricts the native Cerithidea to high-marsh salt pannes (an environment too high in salinity for Ilyanassa and thus providing a habitat refuge for Cerithidea) through egg-string predation and direct competitive interference." This population seemed to be booming, but as they described, it was right a the high tide line, and the pool was very warm and probably very salty.

So tiny -- confirmation would be great!

Most records from San Diego, but appears to have been recorded from as far north as Redondo beach area: https://scholarworks.calstate.edu/concern/theses/b2773x81g?locale=en

This is a very old observation information is taken from my logbook that I kept at the time. Unfortunately, I didn’t have many photographs of the animals I encountered back then I’m having fun going back through my old logbooks and photo albums to enter these old observations.

This snake was on the crawl at 2:10 AM. temp was 55 degrees (it had been an 80 degree day), under a 3/4 moon.

Removed 22 live ones! I know it may seem pointless to remove the ones out of water because it looks like they’ll die anyway but a good amount actually survive until the water levels are back up. Their operculum is pretty good for preventing them from drying out.